Super Born: Seduction of Being (33 page)

“
I don’t think you’re in any
condition to drive to your sister’s.”

“
Who’s gonna drive?” she asked,
giving a little laugh. “I’m flyyying,” she said, spreading her arms
and swaying side to side.

“
Flying…fuckin’ flying?” I asked.
She gave me a “shhh.”

“
Now you?
You’re
in no condition to drive. Why
don’t I fly you home?”

I laughed. “I don’t think so!”

“
Afraid?” she asked, leaning into
me.

“
I’d like to leave with at least an
ounce of male dignity intact.”

“
Strong women who fly intimidate
you?”

“
It’s more the possibility of a
drunken crash and burn that worries me.”

“
Well, it’s been nice knowing you,
and all the people who are gonna die when you crash into them on
your way home tonight.”

I laughed. “Gee, I didn’t think you knew those
people …I think an hour or two in that coffee shop over there
should do the trick. Just need some fuckin’ caffeine.”

She “shhhed” me and then slowly put her steamy
finger over my lips and held it there while I melted. She looked
deeply into my eyes, making me swallow hard. Then came what I had
been expecting all night, a repeated blue/green flash of those gray
eyes. Hazel eyes….you know the rest.

When she pulled away and said, “See ya,” the
trance broke, and I reached for her.

“
Wait! You can’t go! How will I find
you again? You’ll have a new apartment, a new identity!”

She turned to me over her shoulder as she
walked away. She smiled, saying in a tone that was as solid as
granite, “I’ll find you.”

“
But, I don’t even know your name!”
I pleaded, trying to think of anything to make her stay.

She stopped and put her hands on her hips, as
if deciding whether or not this was something she wanted me to
know. Then she gave in and smiled. “It’s Allie.”

I smiled back, knowing how hard it
must be for her to trust someone enough to let that personal
information out.
Me, she trusted me!
Imagine that!
Allie
, I thought, as if the word were
sweet, lyrical music, an entire song in just five letters. Then it
occurred to me that there was no Allie on my list of woman born
January 18
^th
,1976. Whether it was a clerical error or a smudge of a
typewriter ribbon, I didn’t know. But somehow Allie wasn’t recorded
as born the 18
^th
. No wonder we couldn’t find
her. Still, she had been right under my nose. Just the place I
wanted her lips to be.

With that, the fog I had seen before
materialized around her, and then she was gone. But a couple of
seconds later I heard a loud clang and someone in the distance
saying, “Shit!”

Chapter 27

Hung Over and Hung Out

I have become accustomed in the last few
months, okay, years, to waking up in unusual places and positions,
but this one had me baffled. I found myself lying on my side in a
cramped space, like a letter in an envelope. To my back, I felt the
smooth firmness of a wall and, to my chest, I had a little room,
but not much. At the end of the envelope, I could see the dim
predawn light. My eyes were a little blurry still from the previous
night’s Miner’s Lites, but I was certain I saw light, and made the
decision to move toward it. That was a mistake. My shoulders and
neck were tight and sore, screaming as I moved. My back and hip
were twisted from a night sleeping “on the edge,” so to speak, and
rebelling against any further attempts at movement. I managed to
lift my arms from my sides and grab the rim of the envelope, which
I discovered was the leg of my couch. Confident, now, I pulled
myself out and stood there in my boxers with my entire body tight,
sore, and unhappy.

I stared at the sofa, trying to figure how the
hell I’d gotten back there. I soon found a trail of my clothes
leading to and then onto the couch. My socks were on top of the
back of the couch. Apparently, I had curled up there and then
fallen down the crack between the couch and the wall. I shoved the
couch against the wall to prevent further incidents, then was hit
by panic.

I tiptoed to the bedroom and peeked my head
into the doorway to see if any unwelcome, or welcome, surprises
were sleeping there. Relieved at the sight of my empty, unmade bed,
I sighed in relief and began to try to piece back together the
events of the previous night.

* * *

The little article on page three of section C
of the newspaper caught my attention after the steaming mug of
coffee had kicked in and opened my eyes. A man had been found
unconscious and injured in the ritzy Maxim Hotel. He had been found
naked, tied to a bed, with severe hip, back, and internal injuries.
He claimed a beautiful young woman had raped him—right, that’ll get
you a lot of sympathy, Charlie. Buried in the text was the
description, “deformed genitals.”

Oh, my
God
, I thought,
that guy is lucky to be alive!
Somehow he had survived the Spinderella move, unlike poor
Demitri. But who had he been with? Jennifer, Rebecca, the B.I.B.—or
were there more of them? After a brief mental vacation imagining
them all naked and in action with me, I read the article again,
thinking that if things had gone further last night, but for the
grace of God, that could have been me.

Then I had to face it again: what to do now?
With her identity being changed as I sat, all the information I had
was useless. I didn’t even know her old address, let alone her new
one. The birth record game was a loser. Did I really have to wait
and hope she meant what she said about contacting me?
Crap.

The one thing I knew to do was log onto the
website and change all the access codes. Monday, I would find a
security company to set up a new firewall and check to see if
Rebecca had installed a back door. I thought of calling her to
officially terminate our relationship, but chose my usual path of
least resistance and did nothing but eat some toast.

I turned my thoughts to Dr. Jones. Could he
help? Should I tell him everything? No, she was mine, goddamn it. I
couldn’t tell him about the B.I.B., but I did need his brain
again.

* * *

I had never seen Jones quite like this before.
His hair was unkempt, his clothes dirty, and it was clear he hadn’t
shaved in days, as he was sporting a thin, spotty beard. But he was
glad to see me, and turned down his sitar music when I
arrived.

“
What can I do for you, my friend?”
he said. He returned to his desk, ostensibly to continue the work I
had interrupted, but I could see B.I.B. Rescue running on his
laptop.

“
What are you working on there? Is
it about the Super Born?”

“
Ah, the Super Born! Is that what
you’re calling them now?” He seemed to get irritated. He pounded
the desk. “Yes, it is about the Super Born, everything is about the
goddamn Super Born. I can’t sleep. I don’t eat. This mystery is
ruining my life. I have been so close…”

“
We
are
close,” I volunteered.

He looked up eager to believe. “We are? You
have good news?”

I told him everything—well, everything less a
lot of things. I updated him about Jennifer Lowe, her connection to
Rebecca Sans, and how Rebecca had used my site to search for the
B.I.B. I explained to him that I felt the B.I.B. was in serious
danger. I made certain he understood that the B.I.B. would now have
moved and assumed a new identity. I just forgot to mention my
meeting with Allie or what it felt like to run my hands through her
hair or look into her eyes…Anyway, I left out the good
parts.

I lied, trying to convince him that with
Rebecca forcing the B.I.B. to take on a new identity, the birth
record search would be useless, and that we needed a new plan to
deal with them. The whole time, Jones remained calm and silent,
nodding on occasion. “Well?” I asked.

“
I am just thinking. As it happens,
what I am researching right now is a theory that may explain
things.”

“
Is this the Patagonian Algorithm
again?”

“
My lord, no. What is that? You see,
my friend, I have come across indications that the social structure
of the Super Born will probably be similar to that of
bees.”

“
Bees? You mean like buzz, buzz
bees?”

Jones nodded. “It makes sense as far as my
research goes and now is confirmed by the information you’ve
supplied. There can be only one queen. These three or however many
there are will naturally have to seek dominance. Only one will
remain. We are all drones for them, my friend,” said
Jones.

I thought quickly back to the birth record
search I had made and the unexplainable number of young women born
during the Super Bowl who had died mysteriously. “Only one queen…”
I muttered.

“
So it seems. The battle is going on
right now, and here we sit. I am telling you the picture is sad,
very sad indeed.”

“
What can we do? I have to warn
her,” I slipped up.

“
Warn who?”

Luckily, I knew how to recover quickly. “Just
kiddin’.”

“
Kidding about what?” Jones
demanded.

“
The B.I.B. I wish I could warn her
about the others. But I can’t, ’cause I don’t know where she is.”
Smooth, aren’t I?

“
How do you know which of these
Super Born is good and which are the bad ones? The B.I.B. could be
the one exterminating the others.”

I opened my mouth in Allie’s defense, but then
shut up. “Well, what do you think we should do? If you’re right and
we’re the drones, we’ll end up like Demitri . There is no way to
approach any of them safely,” I lied.

Jones shook his head. “Your guess is as good as
mine. Why do you think I look like shit? This whole thing has
gotten out of control. How could I be so right and be so unable to
prove it? It is a dilemma,” he said, coming around the desk and
putting his hand on my shoulder.

Simultaneously, we both wrinkled our
noses and gave a face that said,
He
smells like shit.

As I turned to leave, I heard the
sound of a woman moaning from the bedroom down the hall. He gave a
flimsy smile and said, “Guess she is starting without
me.”

“That’s not the one I saw you with
the other night is it? The one you took home in the
van?”

Jones eyes went wide for a moment
then his face turned quizzical. “Van? What are you talking about my
friend?”

“I saw you at Flanagan’s the other
night with that hot number and you got into a white van with her.
It’s none of my business but, she did go willingly with you,
right?”

“I’m afraid you are mistaken, my
friend. Me, in a white van? Please. Must have been some other hot
Indian guy…Well, if you will excuse me, research calls.”

I will see you soon,” he said
escorting me to the door.

I shook my head as she moaned
again. “What’s your secret? How do you fuckin’ do it?”

“It’s a curse,” he said closing the
door.

Chapter 28

Three Superwomen in One Night:
Not as Much Fun as It Sounds

On the way back to my palatial two-bedroom, I
stopped at a drive-through for some gourmet takeout (and fries). I
was just digging through the bag, trying to figure out what the
suckers had forgot to put in there, when my mobile phone vibrated
on my belt. I answered, with a fry or two in my mouth,
“Yeah?”

The voice on the other end was rushed and near
panic. It was a woman’s voice, but with a terrible amount of
banging and crashing in the background, I couldn’t identify her.
“Don’t talk to her! Whatever you do, don’t tell her anything!
Please be careful! I’m sorry!” With that the call
dropped.

With a few more fries in my mouth I asked,
“Hello? Hello, who is this?”

There was nothing. You know, you used to at
least get a dial tone when a call was cut off, but now all you get
is nothing.

It haunted me all the way home, through a whole
bag of fries, imagining her in danger, battling with Jennifer Lowe:
those two beauties tearing at one another, clothes ripping, hair
flying around their heads, rolling on the floor, breasts pressed
against one another, legs grinding…I almost wrecked the damn car
and ruined a good pair of pants worrying about it.

When the blood returned to my brain, I couldn’t
think of anything to do. I didn’t know who had called, where she
was, or where to even look. I was at a dead end.

I opened the door to my chateau, wondering if I
had any Miner’s Lites left to wash down my feast, and found her
sitting with her arms stretched over the top of my lavish sofa. The
bag containing my half-eaten burger slipped from my
hands.

She laughed. “Drop something?”

I wasn’t certain if she was referring to the
bag or my jaw. Jennifer Lowe looked at me with the eyes of a
butcher ready to chop meat. Luckily, I was cool and had a snappy
rejoinder ready. “What are you doing here?” Smooth as silk….on
sandpaper.